Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 70

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the plants have been stolen. And, of course, the pizza-parlor set has been struck, leaving
the trash-strewn lot that was there before (1989).
Kunen juxtaposes the scene Lee constructed to achieve his film’s aesthetic with the true
nature of Bed-Stuy after he is finished with the neighborhood. Kunen almost accuses Lee of
deliberately manipulating the block, then abandoning it when it has served his needs. Of
course, Kunen also mentions briefly that Lee’s “security force—men from Minister Louis
Farra-khan’s Fruit of Islam private army—shut down and sealed two crack houses on the block,”
which undermines his argument that Lee was opportunistic in his use of this neighborhood
block.
In addition to physically misrepresenting Bed-Stuy, Corliss and Kunen also find fault with
the apparent absence of drugs in ​ Do the Right Thing. ​ Corliss remarks that “On this street there
are no crack dealers, hookers or muggers, just a 24-hour deejay,” while Kunen mentions that,
“Curiously, for a director who has described himself as a ‘social realist,’ Lee makes no reference
to drugs in ​ Do the Right Thing ​ .” The two critics’ stance is clear. Spike Lee does not accurately
represent the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in ​ Do the Right Thing ​ , instead portraying it as
a candy-coated playground in which his story takes place.
In his book, ​ Spike Lee’s America ​ , David Sterritt seeks to address these concerns. He
contends that, just because a film takes place in a “bad” neighborhood, this does not mean that
a filmmaker must show all the gruesome details of that neighborhood. He says, “On any given
day in even the ‘worst’ neighborhoods, most people are just living their lives, not slogging
about in the dirt, drugs, and crime” (47). Sterritt here claims that, if someone like Corliss or